Man, in fact, in all these forms is in a condition of servitude, and all those forms which his life takes are held to be worthless, unholy, and he himself, by the very fact of his connection with them, is essentially something finite, disunited, and thus has no valid worth, since what possesses validity is an Other.
This reconciliation is connected with worldly interests and with Man’s own heart in such a way that it becomes the direct opposite of reconciliation. The further development of this condition of rupture in reconciliation itself, is accordingly what takes the form of the corruption of the Church—the absolute contradiction of the Spiritual within itself.
(3.) The third characteristic is that this contradiction cancels itself in Morality, that the principle of freedom has forced its way into secular life; and since secular life so constructed is itself in conformity with the Notion, reason, truth, eternal truth, it is a freedom which has become concrete, the rational will.
It is in the organisation of the State that the Divine has passed into the sphere of reality; the latter is penetrated by the former, and the existence of the secular element is justified in-and-for-itself, for its basis is the Divine Will, the law of right and freedom. The true reconciliation whereby the Divine realises itself in the region of reality is found in moral and legal life in the State; this is the true disciplining of the secular life.
The institutions of morality are divine, are holy, not in the sense in which what is holy is opposed to what is moral, as when it is held that celibacy represents what is holy as opposed to family life, or voluntary poverty as opposed to active acquisition by one’s own efforts, to what is lawful. In the same way blind obedience passes for being something holy; while, on the contrary, what makes morality is obedience in freedom, free, rational will, the obedience of the subject in respect of what is moral. In morality the reconciliation of religion with
